


I Told Me So

by sottovocexo



Category: Embassy Row Series - Ally Carter
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship, Romance, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-14 21:28:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9203954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sottovocexo/pseuds/sottovocexo
Summary: Following the events of Take The Key and Lock Her Up (2016), Grace reconnects with Thomas and finds that the ending to her story is different than she anticipated.





	1. Talking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavender's blue, lavender's green/When I am king, you will be queen

Rosie finds me by the wall. I smile when she walks up, not only because I'm glad to see her - because it means I have no more secrets. All my friends know where to find me. No one needs to ask. No one is kept in the dark anymore.

"Hey, Rosie," I say, tugging my jacket closer, bracing against the Mediterranean breeze rolling in.

"Hey," she says with a smile, stopping at my side. I wrap my arm around her and hold her until we're both warm.

"You said you were still talking to Thomas?" I ask, thinking the ocean is as blue as my dress, the one that made me look like a princess. Like the princess I was supposed to be.

"Yeah," she says, "from time to time."

I turn to her. "So how often are we talking here?"

"Every week," she says quickly. "Well, maybe every other day. Okay, if you're going to beat it out of me, we sit together at lunch and talk in between classes."

I laugh and look back out onto the ocean. Blue as his sash. His eyes. "So you're saying you know how he's doing?"

Rosie shrugs. "Probably as good as anyone."

"Well...how is he?"

She looks at me. "How were you?"

I don't think. I don't wonder. I leave the memory locked inside my mind and don't dare breach its cell. I have thrown away the key, far into the ocean, deep inside the waves. I don't want to think about it ever again.

Rosie climbs onto the wall and stretches her arms wide, balancing herself as she finds her footing and begins to walk. "He wants to see you."

"What?"

"He hasn't seen you since...it...happened."

I laugh humorlessly. "He probably wants to have me hanged for treason."

"Grace, he's not mad at you. You saved the whole kingdom! You ran away and you haven't talked to him. Not even at school." She balances herself onto one foot, spinning to face me. "Why haven't you gone to see him?"

Because I'm afraid, but I don't tell her. I'm afraid of going back to the palace. I'm afraid of myself. Of what he'll say to me. Of what it could mean.


	2. Visiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who told you so, who told you so?/'Twas my own heart that told me so

I'm not happy to be back at the palace, standing at the doors. The doors that were opened wide and overrun by murderers, rebels and traitors. The doors that were thrown open to kill the king.

I want to see him, but I don't want to be there another second.

"Grace," he says, surprised. He is barefoot, and it makes me laugh, makes me think of the first time I saw him, and I want to cry. It was before he met me. Before he knew about his history and his mother. Before he knew about the real me. 

"Hey, Thomas," I say quietly. 

"I'm glad you're here." He walks closer, and I want to tell him that he's the only one, but the closer he gets, the more I realize I'm happy to see him. I'm happy to see him up and about, all things considered. Free from the restraints of a bed and a hospital. 

I take a step back, and he stops. I don't want him to get closer. I'm afraid that, if he gets too close, he'll see. He'll see who I really am. He'll see all we have in common, all my ghosts. The same ones that now haunt him. He'll see it's all because of me.

"What's wrong?"

I look down, hoping I'll find an answer to that question too. How was it that I could come to see him, to console him, to comfort him in his grief, and he wants to help me? 

"Do you want to go outside? Maybe by the gardens out front?"

I take a deep breath. "I want nothing more." 

The gardens are beautiful. Probably the most wonderful part of the grounds. Out in the open, in sight of the city, they bloom. They breathe. As they sway with the breeze and their petals open wide, they feel like the only part of the palace that is truly free. 

"Why did you come here today?" he asks, his hands clasped behind his back. He looks so much like a prince. I hope he doesn't feel the need to grow up too quickly into a king.

"I came to see you... I thought you wanted to see me."

He laughs. "Of course I do. But something tells me that's not quite the same for you."

What was I doing there? I came to see him. I came to help him. But, deep down, I knew why. I knew what I had to do.

"I'm sorry."

"What?"

"I'm so sorry about what I did to your family."

"Grace..." He steps close, and I let him in. He rubs my arm, holds me close. "You haven't ruined my life, if that's what you think. I want you in my life. You saved your friends and your family. You saved me too."

"She was your mother," I cry, unable to help myself. "I know what it's like to lose one and that's not something I wanted anyone else to ever have to feel." No one should have to feel like I do. No one should have a mother's blood on their hands. 

He is technically one year younger than me but, in so many ways, he is older. He is older than I was when my heart broke and my world changed. Older because his life has been longer than mine. He had two extra years than me to live, unaware that there could be bad things so near to you. Unaware that you could be the bad thing, even if you don't mean to be.

"You did the right thing." I look up at him. He is Adria personified but, for some reason, he makes me think of life outside the walls. He makes me think of the ocean.

I wipe away the tears that have gathered under my eyes, the tears I used to hate myself for. The tears that, for years, I couldn't even shed. No one has ever told me that. No one has ever told me that because I've never done the right thing. All my life, I've made the wrong choice. Been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Overheard the wrong thing. Had the wrong memories. Chased the wrong men. Opened up to the wrong people.

No one has ever told me I did something right.

"You should come back outside the walls...come to Iran. Come see us," I say. "It'll help you. I pushed everyone away for so long but...they were the only ones that could bring me back from the brink. We can help you too."

He looks out over the gardens and breathes in deeply. He set me free, but he won't have the same fate. I wonder if he's thinking about how it might feel to be like the flowers. I wonder if he's thinking of coming. Of our friends. Of Alexei. "Maybe. Sometime."

"Sometime sounds good. I'll see you at school?"


	3. Settling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Call up your men, set them to work.../While you and I keep ourselves warm

Alexei holds me close at our favorite spot in Adria, the one we keep running away to, hiding away from everyone. Most of the time, we sit in silence. He is a man of few words, and there is not much I have to say. He holds me and we stay like that until night. 

I want the warmth of Alexei's arm around me, but I'm thinking of the boy with eyes like the ocean.

"What's wrong, Gracie?"

"I keep thinking..."

"That is dangerous," he says.

"I know. But I can't help it. I can't turn it off."

"You must try. Keep the memories locked away. Don't think of the bad times."

Now that the dust has settled, Alexei does not have bad decisions to dissuade me from making. He protects me from the memories that could take me back.

But I'm not thinking of my memories - now, I'm haunted by someone else's. Someone else with a gun aimed at their mother. Someone else who pulled the trigger.


	4. Hiding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavender's green, lavender's blue/If you love me, I will love you

"Are princes even allowed to sneak out?" I ask as Thomas struts toward me.

"Only the illegitimate kind," he says, grinning. 

"Good thing I abdicated then. I wouldn't have lasted one curfew." 

He holds open the tunnel door for me and we step into Iran. 

For once, I'm the first one here. The others haven't gathered yet, still leaving the city and crossing through the tunnels to get here. Thomas smiles and steps inside after me.

"Nice place you have here," he says, reclining by the pool.

"Thank you," I say with a laugh. "I freaked out an entire beach of ambassador's kids when I jumped off a cliff and found it."

Thomas whistles. "I'm sure there's a story there - what's more, I feel like that's just you getting started."

"It didn't even end in an international incident - and that's par for the course."

When he smiles, his eyes squint and the corners crinkle like ripples in the pool. 

I look at the boy I no longer have to marry and want him still.

"What do you think it would have been like?"

"What would what have been like?" He takes off his shoes and soaks his bare feet in the pool.

"If we went through with it. If we'd really gotten married."

"I thought you didn't want to marry me," he says, his eyes twinkling. 

"I didn't want to _have_ to marry you," I clarify. "Usually I don't like doing what crazy future-mother-in-law princesses tell me to do."

Thomas gestures for me to join him at the pool, so I sit down next to him, my knees curled to my chest. I throw my head back, wishing a breeze would roll off the pool the way it rides the ocean. He leans in and whispers, "You abdicated your right to rule. I don't think you can marry me anymore...even if you wanted to."

"See, that's the part that makes me interested." 

Thomas continues leaning in but jerks back, sits up straight. He seems to think better of it.

He sees Alexei.

"Alexei, I can explain," I say, fumbling to my feet, but he runs back into the tunnel. 

"I don't think you can this time." It feels like all the light has left the room when he slams the door behind him.

"That was not what it looked like," I say, chasing after him, trying to keep up. I've lied to Alexei many times before to protect him. But I know this time is different. This lie is the worst one I can tell.

"I don't want to hear it."

"Alexei! Wait!" 

He rounds a corner and runs into Lila, who catches his arm. "What's the matter?" she asks. She sees me and knows. It's always my fault.

Lila follows Alexei back through the tunnel, and I don't. I can't. Maybe, I realize, I'm going someplace else. 

I don't feel like hanging out in Iran any longer.


	5. Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let the birds sing, and the lambs play/We shall be safe, out of harm's way

I couldn't begin to imagine what "normal" looked like for me. For us.

Normal looked like the boy next door. Maybe that's what my mother also thought when she fell for a similar boy from another embassy. For Dominic. Maybe my dad was her prince charming in the end. Maybe those kinds of stories are the real normal and their endings don't change.

His normal was different. It meant forgetting a mother he never really knew and spending the passing years growing older, taller, and closer to becoming king. Normal meant that I was the rightful heir to his throne, but he had my heart. 

Sometimes he sends me flowers from the gardens, making me think there are some things about the palace that can be beautiful. It reminds me that something is capable of living there, of growing and thriving. That there is still birdsong and laughter. Sometimes he asks me to move back. 

I know I have always been good at one thing. I have always been able to fall. I know it's still true as I feel myself falling for him, further and further, but never far enough. I will never fall back into a life inside those walls. I will never be trapped by normal again.


	6. Proposing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I love to dance, I love to sing/When I am queen, you'll be my king

We meet in the gardens. I won’t walk further. I won’t pass through the gates ever again.

The rest of the time we are by the sea. Or he visits the embassy. Grandpa likes him – spends most evenings talking to him. Ms. Chancellor loves his manners, says he should teach me a thing or two, and she and Grandpa leave for the night.

One night he comes to the embassy when Grandpa isn’t around and Ms. Chancellor is in her study. He comes with one slip of paper and a slightly more disheveled outfit than usual.

“Thomas, I didn’t know you were coming.” 

“May I come in?”

Even when he invites himself in without permission he is more polite than I’ll ever learn to be.

He sits at the dining room table, one chair away from Grandpa’s head seat.

“We have three formal dining rooms in the palace and I’ve never used one of them.”

I sit next to him. “That can’t be true. You must have had Christmas dinner in at least one.”

“Christmas dinners were for men that far outranked me. My family…never ate together. Not once.”

Not even once. Not even now that his family consists of two.

“Do you miss her?”

I don't wonder who. I instantly know. In my heart, in my mind. “Every second.”

“Does it get easier?” he asks, wringing the paper between his palms. 

“Never,” I say.

Happiness does not always come ever after, but there will always be an after. There's always a fall. I try to smile—for him, for myself. Grief doesn’t pass, but new friends come. New loves. New opportunities. New lives. I had lived a dozen lifetimes and I was still looking for the one I wanted to lead.

The moments we are together are tinged with melancholy. He understands me and I get him. No one else has gone through what we have. No one has done what we've done. They weren't there. They don't know.

I know him and pity him and love him the same.

“I want to find a new way,” he says, so quietly even I barely hear. “I think Adria needs to. Two hundred years ago, they formed a new reign. Soon, they will have to do it again.”

He flattens the paper and lays it between us.

"What is this? A formal, signed document stating your love?" I look at it, firm out the wrinkles, and know I’ve seen it before. I’ve signed it before.

"I would never try to make you a princess," he says with a laugh while I stare at the document, stunned into silence. "But I want to make a new life with you. You were the first to show me the world beyond the walls - to change my world completely. Want to do it again?"

“You abdicated.” The words come out of me before I realize I’ve thought them. “Wow…we sure do throw that word around here a lot, huh?”

Thomas smiles. “Before this generation, the throne has never been relinquished. Now, it's been abdicated 68 times."

"What can I say? I know how to start a revolution.” And how to end a kingdom. “What about the royal family? The monarchy? It’s been so integral to Adria’s history – to Europe!”

“A bloody history it’s been at that. The kingdom will have time – the monarchy will last until the end of my father’s rule, so that leaves decades to put into place a new government system, one that will phase out the old. I don’t intend to step down completely. I will do my part for the new government, if Adria wants me to.”

“Spoken like a true king,” I whisper. “It’s a shame Adria will never get to see you that way.”

“It will be worth it,” he says, resolute. He places his hand on mine.

“Hey, I haven’t agreed to marry you… I don’t know where you’re getting all these crazy ideas from,” I tease, welcoming the cover of his hand.

“Lucky for you I'm a proactive planner and a patient man." He rises from the chair, leaves the document in front of me.

“What job skills do you even have beyond ‘princing’?”

He feigns hurt. “Plenty, thank you very much. ‘Princing’ is more of an umbrella term for an arsenal of highly desirable skills.”

“Ah, yes, of course.” I laugh. I laugh like only Thomas can make me laugh because I don't feel weighed down by the past. He shows me a future. I look down at the paper, hold it in my hands to feel that it’s real. It is the future. "When will you step down? You didn’t write a date here.”

"The day you say 'I do.'" 

"You're persistent, too. You forgot to add that part."

"See?” he says, pointing to himself. “Plenty of skills."

In the after, there is always a fall. As I look into those eyes like the ocean, I know loving him is my final fall.


	7. Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who told me so, who told me so?/I told myself, I told me so

Megan has decided her most important job is to carry my veil and there is no veil in sight. My hair falls freely in waves around my shoulders. Nothing adorns me but a necklace that was my mother's, given to her by my father to wear on their wedding day. On my day. I wouldn't have it any other way.

"Carry the veil. Fluff the dress. Those were my jobs. You didn't give me any jobs!" Megan shouts, tugging at my simple white dress, held up with spaghetti straps and straight through the hips. Just how I like it. “Do you need me to hack something?”

"Well, you can hold her flowers!" Rosie suggests, scooping up the bouquet sitting on the table, the bouquet made of fresh flowers from the gardens. "She's not going to be able to carry them up there."

"No, that's Noah's job - he's man of honor!” Megan shouts. “She hands him her flowers. I could really use a veil right now!”

"I've got it," Rosie says, eyeing me. "Tell her to breathe."

I let go of the breath I hadn't realized I had been holding in.

"Grace, take a breath," Megan says, taking hold of my arms and holding me in front of her. "Breathe." Like the flowers in the garden. Let it roll off me like the waves. Set my mind on the ocean, the cool air that comes with it, and the crystal-clear blue of the water. Think of Thomas.

"Are you nervous?" Megan asks.

"I've never felt like this before." Paralyzed. Anxious. Excited.

I have chased men down winding paths carved out beneath the city, braved a mind that told me to forget what it had done, brought a continent to my feet with one obsession, and I have never felt the way I do thinking of Thomas and the moment I say "I do." 

And I know what it is. I've tasted it before, but never like this.

I wanted to find the Scarred Man. I wanted to forget, to be free. I wanted to stop the princess who took my mother and thought she could have a life instead of her. Instead of me. I no longer wanted those stories to define me. 

But, more than that, I want to marry Thomas. I want our life to be my story. And I have never wanted something more badly in my life. 

“Are you ready?”

My father stands beside Jamie in the doorway, smiling. Smiling like I haven’t seen in years.

“Yes.”

The two men who raised me take my arms and escort me out the door, Megan and Rosie trailing behind.

"Has anyone seen Alexei?" I ask.

Megan points to the back of the chapel, where he is watching. Smiling. I hope he’s happy to see me happy. I hope he isn’t still reeling from the hurt. I hope he’ll keep his arm around Lila all night as they celebrate, and I hope they’ll always be my friends.

I look out on the rest of the crowd. I know what everyone will think: I don’t look like a princess. And I don’t want to. I want to look like me: a lost princess that had been found and set free. Because of the boy at the end of the aisle - a crown prince who would not be king.

I fly down the aisle like a bird in the sky, and, standing at Thomas' side, I blossom like a flower of the gardens. I am free and safe and have been found again. 

Grandpa stands before us as our officiant. It is almost as I imagined.

I thought I would get married to the tall boy with dark hair from the embassy over the wall. I thought our wedding would be by the sea. At the end of the aisle, I stand looking into the eyes of the boy who makes me think of the ocean, the boy I couldn’t even dream of, ready to write our new story.

"A wedding fit for rebel royals," Noah whispers in my ear as he takes my bouquet so Thomas can take my hands. So he can step down. So Adria can find a new way. So I can finally say "I do."


End file.
